Juan Williams' 'Teachable Moment': Four Lessons

After National Public Radio President Vivian Schiller fired the network’s veteran “news analyst” Juan Williams for declaring that he felt fearful when flying with individuals in Muslim garb, she declared that her action constituted a “teachable moment.” Indeed, it is.

The question occurs, however: Precisely what is to be learned from it?

Schiller tried to dress up her summary termination of Williams’ NPR contract in the cloak of standing up for “journalistic ethics” and “journalistic standards.” But her insistence that National Public Radio does not allow any of its personnel to express personal opinions on topics they cover is laughable. Even casual listeners to NPR’s programs are familiar with the personal views of NPR stars like Diane Rehm, Cokie Roberts, Nina Totenburg, Garrison Keillor and Mara Liasson (who, like Juan Williams, has a regular gig at Fox News).

While there is doubtless something to the argument that, unlike the other illustrative examples mentioned, Juan Williams had evidently previously transgressed the real journalistic standard of NPR – namely, liberalism or “progressivism” (which had already earned him Schiller’s wrath and subjected him to job action), the grounds for Williams’ firing was his statement about Muslims. The first and most unmistakable lesson of this affair, therefore, is that it is hazardous to one’s livelihood, if not literally to one’s life, to say anything that is deemed offensive to Muslims.

Unfortunately, that is true not just at National Public Radio, but in the Western world more generally. Witness the trials of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada and Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, all accused of hate speech against Muslims and Islam. Never mind that they have simply pointed out the threat posed by mainstream Islam’s shariah – the totalitarian political-military-legal program that has, as its stated purpose, the conquest of the entire world.

Then there is the case in this country of Molly Norris, the Seattle Times cartoonist who proposed that her counterparts at papers around the country join her in a “Draw Mohammed” day. She is not being prosecuted for giving offense to Muslims; instead, she had to go into hiding, lost her job and changed her identity and appearance. One wonders if Ms. Schiller regards such manifest expressions of “fear” to be a violation of “journalistic standards”?

The second lesson follows from the first: Juan Williams’ firing is evidence of submission to shariah. As Molly Norris can attest, that code makes it a capital offense to “blaspheme” or “slander” Islam. It is no accident that Williams feels trepidation about getting on a plane with those whose dress indicates that they are shariah-adherent. That fear is precisely the intended response to terrifying jihadism; it is what is expected of dhimmis – the infidels who do not convert to Islam, but are nonetheless allowed to live as second-class citizens under Muslim domination. NPR and the other media that submit (the literal meaning of Islam) so as to give no offense rather than risk retaliation are exhibiting the characteristics of dhimmitude.

Third, as the Center for Security Policy’s blue-ribbon Team B II made clear in its new book, Shariah: The Threat to America, it is axiomatic that, the more we exhibit such reactions, the more those who adhere to shariah will feel emboldened to assert themselves aggressively – and, in due course, violently.

The fourth lesson involves the group whose demand for Juan Williams’ punishment appears to have precipitated his dismissal: The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has been linked by the federal government to Hamas (a State Department-designated terrorist organization) and the Muslim Brotherhood (an organization that has as its mission “destroying Western civilization from within”). Several of its officials are serving time on terrorism charges. And the organization was designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history: the successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation.

In addition, evidence accumulated by the Center for Security Policy and aggregated at CAIRObservatory.org suggests that CAIR is also in violation of another federal statute: the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). FARA was the law used recently to convict and deport 10 Russian spies and agents of influence. And, pursuant to FARA, it would be illegal for CAIR to engage in the kind of influence operation in which it sought, and secured, the punishment of Juan Williams for what shariah would consider to be a slander against Muslims.

As it has done in fifteen other recent instances of CAIR-instigated influence operations, the Center has just written letters to the targets of such activities, alerting them to the organization’s questionable legal status and its implications. In this case, the recipients were Juan Williams, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (on whose program Williams made the comments that got him sacked), Fox News president Roger Ailes and NPR’s Schiller. Copies of these letters have also been transmitted to the appropriate authorities in the Department of Justice.

In short, Juan Williams’ termination by NPR can, indeed, teach all of us much about the shariah-mandated stealth jihad we are up against and the threat it poses to our freedom of expression – and, unless it is stopped, to our Constitution and nation. This is not, of course, the sort of lesson Vivian Schiller has in mind. But if her indefensible action winds up helping the rest of us learn what we have to about our enemies, foreign and domestic, with his sacrifice, Juan Williams may just have rendered an incalculable service to his country.